MANDA SCOTT
The acclaimed writer tells us why she writes “thrutopian” fiction
Words by Jonathan Wright /// Portrait by Faith Tilleray
BEFORE SHE BEGAN WORK ON HER NEW novel, Manda Scott thought she had “stopped writing”. She was busy with other projects and, more importantly, had a sense of urgency about the state of the world that didn’t square with the convoluted business of getting a book to market.
“It seemed that the publishing cycle took too long,” she says. “Humanity is in a bus heading towards the edge of a cliff – and we might be over the cliff, I thought, before a book was actually out. Or at least the window within which we can turn away from the cliff might have gone. So I was doing other stuff.”
By this, she means she had become a podcaster: the host of Accidental Gods, which is concerned with creating a better future. She had also been busy teaching an online course in “thrutopias”, narratives that offer route-maps to a world we would be proud to pass on to future generations. Add in her commitments as a smallholder and a teacher of shamanic dreaming, and she was just plain busy.